>From another thread:
> I've seen software
> that turned the Palm into external LCD monitor, making it external
> touch screen device that are slaved to a PC is possible.
This is pretty cool. I wonder if this also turned the touchscreen into
an input device for the PC?
Has anyone seen anything like this - software or hack or mod - that
lets you connect a Pocket PC or older Win CE device to a Windows
machine to use as a combo external monitor / touchscreen input
device? It would be pretty cool to be able to use your old PDA (or
touchscreen cell phone) as an touchscreen input device or game
controller like the Nintendo DS has...
I have some older PDAs (Cassiopeia E-100, iPAQ 3650) and handhelds
(NEC MobilePro 770) whose usefulness would be rejuvenated with this
type of application. Or even plugging in your Windows Mobile cell
phone to use as an input device for a desktop application such as a
game or drawing app.
I would think they'd have to connect to the PC via sync cable (serial
in the case of the Cassiopeia or MobilePro, USB in the case of the
iPAQ). Either the throughput would have to be fast enough to send
screen updates to the PDA (say 320x240 res, 65535 colors) and for the
PDA to send screen taps to the PC. Maybe after initializing the PDA's
display, the driver software would only send screen changes (like VNC
viewer) to save bandwidth.
For the non-USB devices, the only other ways to connect would have to
be through a NIC (the E-100 only has a CF slot, so you'd need to find
a CF NIC) or IR (sounds kludgy, probably slow. Also, in a gaming
situation, would you have to have 1 IR receiver per player on the
machine?)
Thoughts?